GLR September-October 2024

citement as he did that night, and he committed pederasty eleven times before morning.” The dam had broken, and the pa tient later engaged in sex with men several more times until, overcome with guilt and shame, he came to Dr. Hammond’s of fice, seeking a cure for his troublesome desires. The patient had met a young woman and wished to marry her—though he felt no sexual attraction to her at all. Could the doctor please help? “I advised continuous association with virtuous women, and a system of severe study of subjects that would require ab stract thought of the highest kind. I suggested mathematics. He at once agreed to pursue the exact course I marked out for him in these respects. I also recommended cold baths every morning, a liberal diet, and plenty of outdoor exercise, either of walking or horseback-riding.” The doctor also cauterized the nape of the man’s neck and his lower back, and began administering doses of sodium bromide, an anticonvulsant and sedative meant to deaden his sexual desires. After three months of burning and drugging, success of a type was achieved. “Bromism had been produced to a tolerably severe degree, and with its appearance, the unnatural proclivities towards men began to disappear. He no longer had images, such as had formerly haunted him, pass ing through his mind, and he could look at a nude statute [ sic ] of a man without feeling any sexual excitement.” There was only one problem: “He had not, however, had any inclination to wards women.” Dr. Hammond still viewed this as progress, though, and feeling that the patient “had obtained such a degree of control over himself, as to prevent his returning to his former habits,” he halted the bromide treatments and switched instead to a mild tincture of strychnine. “During this period he had no relapse. The images, which formerly excited him now disgusted him, for he associated them with some of the most remorseful feel ings a man could have, and he had begun to take pleasure in the society of respectable women. He had not, however, experi enced any but the faintest evidences of sexual excitement, though occasionally he had felt slight normal desires.” The treatments were begun in the spring of 1882, and over a year later, having in effect been chemically castrated, the pa tient “was strong and healthy, free from all pederastic tenden cies; in fact, entertaining the liveliest disgust for it, and thinking seriously of marriage.” He assured the doctor that he had had “several times, natural sexual desires, accompanied by erec tions, but a high sense of morality, which now exists in him, has prevented any yielding. He has nerve to keep himself perfectly chaste till his marriage, and then to use with discretion what ever power he may have.” Dr. Hammond, having presented what he clearly viewed as a success story in treating a homo sexual patient, rang down the curtain at this point—yet it is easy enough to predict what was likely to happen in Act Two. European doctors were in the forefront when it came to treating sexual minorities, but by the early 1880s, some Amer ican doctors were stumbling not far behind, pulled along by pa tients who had already devoured the latest European medical reports and were eager to have their cases treated with under standing and compassion. Advances in American medicine were uneven, but whether a doctor shocked a man’s genitals or drugged him into becoming a eunuch, the profession at last began to accept that the problem was not in their patients’ weak wills or corrupted souls. Acceptance of homosexuality was def

initely not part of the medical protocol, but for more and more doctors, their patients’ abnormal behavior was considered to be merely misdirected, not disgustingly wicked. Reading these case studies from the late 19th century is like watching a drama that is unfolding behind a thick layer of translucent glass—we can see only vague shapes and movement, hear only muffled voices. We catch glimpses of these very real people, but their stories are being relayed to us at a distance, by doctors whose attitudes range from hostile to clueless. Still, early case histories can provide windows into the lives of everyday Americans whose stories appear nowhere else. The reports are flawed and prejudiced and incomplete, and yet here and there the humanity comes through, the blurred comes into focus. We cheer the defiance of the young lesbian standing up to her fam ily, determined to share her life with the woman she loves. We empathize with the embarrassed clerk desperately trying to hide his erections from his handsome co-workers. With the bachelor in bed with the bell-boy we celebrate the volcanic release of pent-up desire— eleven times in one ecstatic evening! R EFERENCES Beard, G.M. S exual Neurasthenia (Nervous Exhaustion): Its Hygiene, Causes, Symptoms, and Treatment, with a Chapter on Diet for the Nervous. E. B. Treat, 1884. Hamilton, Allan McLane. “The Civil Responsibility of Sexual Per verts,” in The American Journal of Insanity , vol. LII (1895-1896). Hammond, William A., Sexual Impotence in the Male . Bermingham & Co., 1883. Shaw, J.C., and G.N. Ferris. “Perverted Sexual Instinct,” in The Jour nal of Nervous and Mental Disease , vol. 10, no. 2 (1883).

September–October 2024

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